“Who witnesses for the witness?”—The question of my title may be rhetorical to the highest degree, not to say disingenuous, or at least it could be perceived as such, especially by anyone familiar with the work of Paul Celan.1 It is a question that draws on, or rather, that is drawn from a poem by Paul Celan, though Celan, in those lines, does not phrase these matters as a question, and that clearly puts my own question into question. Celan, when he brings up the matter of the “witness” in the poem beginning with the line “Aschenglorie hinter” from the 1967 volume Atemwende, in fact makes a simple statement—that is, he answers my question before I had even thought of asking it. And his answer seems, on the surface at least, to be clear and unambiguous. He says, “Niemand zeugt für den Zeugen” (No one witnesses for the...
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